Songs of the Last Batallion
by Jubalii
Summary: They've been working over 30 years on rebuilding the whirlwind pipe-dream of a madman hellbent on war. Even so, they could never truly forget who they were before they placed their lives in the hands of a charismatic Major. [Oneshots centered around the soldiers of Millennium]
1. Chapter 1: The Doctor

_Insert proper disclaimer about not owning Hellsing here. _

* * *

There are days when he can no longer function. The Major seems to think that he's an automaton; that he can work for days on end without breaking. Not only that, he has to stop and tend to the paltry needs of the other soldiers—he is the only resident doctor on board, even though his title is hardly a medical one anymore, with all the degrees under his belt.

So, amidst the cries of help from the vampires, the many worries of the two women on board over this and that and what if and so on, being called to the Major's side at every other moment, and to top it all off the already-pressuring demands of his work—he's ready to explode.

On those days, he leaves work early. He tapes up the sign he made on a piece of notebook paper, with words large enough to read from down the hall, written in his own flowing script: _Lassen sie mich allein. Legen notizen in mein mailbox. _It's straightforward enough, and so the soldiers are just S.O.L. when they come to find the Doc.

He creeps to his room, if one can call it a room. It's really a closet, a bunk screwed into the wall, and enough standing room to turn in a circle. But he has made it his own, like all the others that are lucky (or powerful) enough to have a room to themselves. There are medical images and CAT Scans, MRI readings and statistical data pasted all over the walls. But in one corner, the one just above his bed, there are photographs, brown-washed with age. They are his prized possessions, the memories of his life before all of _this_.

But even that doesn't tempt him. No, what he wants is in the closet. He pushes his meager clothing aside—an extra coat, his pajamas, a fresh shirt for special occasions—and he finds the bag in the back, hanging neatly on the last clothes hanger against the wall.

He pulls the bag forward and unties it, pulling out the carefully wrapped object within. It's a dress; a gray dress that was all the style back in the late 1930s, but now it would be considered old-fashioned. The black buttons still gleam, and the fabric is still soft and worn and only moth-eaten in a few places. He caresses it like one would a lover, laying it ever so gently on the bed before undressing for the night.

He doesn't rush; he hangs up his coat, throws his dirty outfit through the laundry chute, and pulls out his new outfit to iron and hang for tomorrow. He then crawls into the bed, pulling the dress up and breathing in the dust on its surface. It's long lost the perfumed scent it had, but the fabric is familiar against his skin and he's lost in the sensation for countless moments.

Even without his glasses on, he can see the photos on the wall. He zeroes in on the image he loves most: the woman, her hair tied in a neat chignon, wearing the dress in his arms. The dress was brand new at the time, and her eyes sparkle with delight at being given such a rare treat in a time of war and rationing.

He breathes in the fabric again and he remembers the scent she used to wear, and suddenly she's with him in his mind. She lies with him, her hands wandering over his body as she whispers her love in his ears. He begins to shake, remembering every night that they shared a bed, those fifteen glorious years of marriage cut off too quickly.

"Evelyn, oh my Evelyn," he moans, and it becomes the chant that he's been saying for the past thirty years. Then the sorrow and loss and loneliness that has become his life hits him all at once and he's sobbing, crying out at the top of his lungs and muffling it the best he can in the dress and into his pillow, curling his knees up and trembling with the force of it all.

He knows that he can't bring her back, that even in all his lunacy he'd never dare turn her peaceful corpse into the experiment he has locked away in his office—the chip isn't supposed to that, it's not supposed to raise the dead so it doesn't do it good and proper. And he _would_ have his beloved wife back good and proper, and not a ruined shell born of pain and misery.

He feels as though it would be less painful to rip his own heart out of his chest and watch it beat and break, because he's grown up all his life in the church and he knows in his soul that when he does die, he's not going to be reunited with his kind, good little _mausi _in Heaven.

No, he's going straight to the land of eternal torment, where he'll burn beside the Major and entire fucking Batallion in the lake of fire. He can't bring her back in this life, and he'll never see her in the next—the thought that he will never touch her or kiss her again, that he'll never hear her tinkling laugh or shiver at the sound of his name on her lips, is pure agony.

So he suffers in his anguish, beating the mattress and sobbing out the sheer _unfairness _of it all, and damning himself over and over again for ever thinking it would be alright to join up with the Major and his army. Because, even if he managed to escape now, what good would it do? He could live a pious life forevermore and still not extinguish all the evil acts he'd been coerced into doing the past thirty years.

And the Captain, in the next room over, hears it all since the only thing separating the two spaces is a sheet of very thin metal. He turns over and closes his eyes, preparing his body for sleep. He won't speak a word about it to anyone; he'll take the secret of the good Doctor's episodes of grief and distress with him to his grave.

There's not enough privacy to be had around the ship as it is, and after all, everyone who walked the metal platform has felt the same things. He knew the feeling of overwhelming loss and sadness, and as he went to bed, the only thing in his heart was sympathy for the man who— in all his brilliance— couldn't have the one thing his heart craved.

* * *

**Afterword: **

**Q^Q** **(whispers* I'm a horrible person.)**

This is actually the first in a series of oneshots I'm doing about all the L.B., which is why it's not considered "completed". I have no idea who I'm doing next, though I have ideas for nearly all of them.


	2. Chapter 2: The Major

He was beside himself with anger. For the first time in years, he couldn't come up with an idea. Even as a child, he'd been gifted with the ability to come up with plans off the top of his head, but now? He couldn't keep the thoughts straight in his head.

The Führer had given him an important mission, but how was he to complete it if he couldn't think up a good plan?! He'd been pacing back and forth in his room for weeks, his hands running through his short blonde locks. He'd asked his closest comrades, all of which had no better luck than he did. The good doctor had even feigned stupidity, bent over his specimen and staring up at his leader with his strange glasses.

"I don't know what you mean, mein Major," he'd said with an air of irritation at being interrupted in the middle of one of his experiments. "Our mission is to create a Midian army and go after the vampire Alucard as well as England. Our mission is _war_. It's as simple as that." The captain had stared back stolidly before shrugging, and even Warrant Office Schrödinger had shot down the question is his own childish way before flouncing off to bother Zorin in the showers.

How did they not understand?! Their mission was war, but to have war you must move the troops, and to move the troops you had to think about secrecy! They couldn't just send naval fleets of vampires across the channel; it wasn't like the olden days, when they only had torpedoes and airstrikes to worry about! And they couldn't very well _march_ across the ocean, could they?!

He was the commanding officer—it was his job to make sure that they all were able to perform their duties. How could they do anything without being able to get to England first!? It kept him up at night, the thinking. He lost his appetite; his shining eyes grew dull. No one else seemed to be worried about it; they were all busy with their own tasks. Only he suffered.

And so he walked the empty halls of the metal hangar they were staying in, hidden well in the South American jungles. He paused as he heard the familiar crooning of Rip van Winkle, who was in the midst of her self-imposed exercise routine to "cut down fat", as if she had any to cut. The woman was skin and bones as it was, and the suits she wore, while feminine enough, didn't do anything to help her look like anything more than someone's kid sister.

He tapped his foot along with her a cappella performance, unfamiliar with the song she was singing but enjoying the rhythm of it. Usually she sang her operas or sometimes even children's rhymes and television jingles while she did the exercises, but today it was a song of war ministers.

"_Neunundneunzig kriegsminister, streichholz und benzinkanister; hielten sich für schlaue leute," _she crowed to the empty room, ducking and twisting and turning so fast that one wondered if she danced or was pretending to fight someone. The Major sighed; if he had been in a better mood, he might have popped in and praised her for keeping the faith, as it were. Not everyone sang of war so beautifully as she did.

* * *

The song haunted him again that night, when he was in his office working. The radio buzzed static, but he finally found a station and was listening when the remembered melody struck him and he sat up from his work, looking at the speaker curiously.

"_Die nachbarn haben nichts gerafft, und fühlten sich gleich angemacht; Dabei schoss man am horizont auf neunundneunzig luftballons!" _He smiled to himself and hummed along with the tune, enjoying the story unfolding in the words. One simple mistake had led to the destruction of the world by a fierce war; what a nice thought. Even better, that they had bombed each other out of existence.

Now it was stuck in his head, the song about the ninety-nine toy balloons. The words of the song stirred something in his mind and suddenly he was eight-years-old, standing on the bank of a river with his baby sister. He barely remembered his own childhood, simply because it wasn't beneficial to his work in his present life, but now he thought about that time on the river.

He was going to sail his armada of paper boats, and she had a balloon on a string, bought with a coin their mother had given them to spend in town. They were supposed to split the coin, but his sister had seen the balloon and he had always doted on her, being a good older brother. So there she stood, her three-year-old legs wobbling under the strain of standing on an incline as she watched her brother line up and prepare the fleet for their journey, pretending that he was an important war minister.

They properly christened the fleet with pretend confetti and solemn speeches before setting the wax-covered paper shapes into the water and releasing the balloon, letting it float into the bright sky as they waved goodbye to the brave "soldiers" going off to war. By the time they looked up again, the balloon was just a colored dot in the blue abyss.

His memories weren't usually so clear, but this one he remembered vividly. He could feel the breeze blowing his bangs out of his face, the sweaty stickiness of Leisl's hand as he held it to keep her from tumbling down into the river, the sparkling vivacity of the water in the sunshine…. He paused for a moment, basking in the joy of remembrance, so rare to him. He hardly remembered anything good about his life—mostly he lived in the presence, only delving into the past to examine his mistakes in order not to repeat them.

"Max!" Leisl chirped in his mind, her childish lisp slurring the name as she grinned toothily at him. He felt the ghost of a laugh in his chest, but then it was pushed aside as his thoughts turned darker. "Max!" shrieked his sister, now twenty years old, her dark hair tumbling into her face and hands held out imploringly as the soldiers dragged her away, kicking and screaming. "Max! _Hilfe_! I'm your sister!"

He had miraculously kept himself from trembling, his hands clasped behind his back as he watched her fight her captors. He'd closed off his heart, trying to make his eyes hard as he looked away from her.

"No sister of mine would harbor Jewish scum in her home. I have no sister," he said coldly, and sealed her fate as well as his. His superior had clapped him on the shoulder, chuckling as her screams faded away into the background.

"Very good choice, officer. It's sad to say that these things happen, but… think of it as pruning a rosebush. In order for you to bloom brightly, the withered buds must be clipped away." He watched the soldiers load her into the van along with the filth they'd found living under her floorboards. "In any case, I'll be sure to let _them_ know that you have what it takes to excel in the Führer's army."

"Yes, thank you," he had smiled at his boss, saluting as the older man went away. He'd never seen Leisl again and had burned every picture he'd owned of her, but her eyes still haunted him in his nightmares at times, along with his mother's weakened voice as she begged him to take care of his sister after her death.

* * *

He growled and twisted the dial on the radio viciously, turning it off. He had no time to be thinking about such things. He _had_ taken care of his sister, just like he'd taken care of the prisoners of war and the Jews and the Gypsies, and anyone else who had stood in his way.

Throwing aside his work, he peeled off his shirt and crawled into bed, fluffing the pillow under him and sighing as he removed his glasses. The soldiers' sounds were muffled through the closed door, and he heard Zorin say something snippy to the Captain as they walked by. Schrodinger and the Doctor were rearranging the equipment in the lab below his room; he heard them both growling at each other as glass tinkled and then the doctor shouted "_Hört mir zu, _you bumbling excuse for an officer!" as something crashed and Schrödinger yelped in pain.

He fell asleep to these familiar sounds, but close to dawn he awoke. Sitting abruptly in bed, he stared at the gray light. It was as clear to him as anything, as if he'd known it all along—he knew now how to bring his army across the ocean. His boat wasn't the answer; it was Leisl's _luftballon, _high in the sky….

"Balloons," he whispered to the empty night. "No. _Zeppelins_." He rolled over and clambered out of bed, reaching the phone on his desk. It rang three times before the Doctor's sleepy voice answered on the other end of the line.

"Doctor, get the men and have them meet me in the assembly hall. I have the answer."

* * *

**Afterword:** This was supposed to be a silly oneshot for something Ketti and I are brewing. But I ran with it, and now it's its own thing. Sorry! (OWO)7


End file.
